Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives

Inspired by Susan Sontags examination of the impact of photography of conscience in Regarding the Pain of Others, Kimberly A. Nances Responding to the Pain of Others: Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives takes as its point of departure Sontags speculation that in combatting human rights abuse, a narrative seems likely to be more effective than an image. Building on her own earlier research on Aristotelian rhetorical theory and testimony, along with other interdisciplinary approaches, Nance analyzes the socio-literary narratives of Elvia Alvarado, Medea Benjamin, Peter Dickinson, Benjamin Alire Senz, Clea Koff, Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Valentino Achak Deng, Dave Eggers, Uwem Akpan, and Alicia Partnoy. Each of them, she finds, confronts a human rights discourse in which wordsand witnesseshave become disconnected from actions. Recognizing that the genres own conventions have become an obstacle to its projects, these testimonialists draw on humor, irony, satire, parody, and innovative literary techniques, alongside strategies rooted in real-life organizing, in an effort to reactivate the discourse of human rights. They seek to persuade readers to exchange a solidarity of sentiment, a state Michael Vander Weele calls an aesthetics in which the engine revs but the clutch is never engaged, for actual social action.